So, I understand that I’m a little late to the whole “social media” game. Back in my day it was just Napster and Ask Jeeves and Hotmail, none of this coded cyber language that’s meant to make Millennials feel like they have a skill. But ladies, apparently these designer calendars for Kaylee’s pre-K soccer booster club are not going to sell themselves without a presence on the Twitter, so I have to ask: Am I us#ing hashtags wrong?
I ask because I’m not sure how to Google it; I don’t think you can use the symbol thing in the search box. I can’t ask my husband, because he’s made it quite clear that I need to “give him a fucking break with the inconsequential yammering out of my bitch box.” So, he’s on a boy’s trip to Vegas, and Kaylee only has a Pinterest and an Instagram because she can’t read yet (and no, she DOES NOT have a learning disability, we have had her TESTED). I would ask that guy I dated in college who’s in IT now, but it took me forever to get the dick pics out of my iCloud the last time I messaged him. I had to go to the Genius Bar!
So here’s what I understand: You say “hashtag” before the thing you want to say, but is the hashtag the same as the pound sign, and doesn’t it have to go in the word? So it looks like profanity in a cartoon? And does capitalization count? Do you need to only use certain terms? Is it like the National Library of Medicine medical subject heading system? A keyword search? What is “trending?”
Will you not see this if I don’t hashtag it? What if I have to type a phone number? What do I do then? Do they just draw attention to the word I want to hashtag? Like ##this##? Look, I don’t f#cking know what I’m doing.
I might be one box deep in my Chablis stash, so I think I can be honest: Who in the big, fat, pile of fucks gives a wet, flappy fuck? Oh, look at me, I have an Internet thing that looks important, but it’s a goddamn stupid word spelled wrong with a # in front of it! I have a million goddamn followers on Twitter and I sold all of my soccer calendars because my name is Emily and I make six figures at a job that basically means I’m on Facebook all day. And my kid is ugly! I have a persistent yeast infection that no level of Summer’s Eve can mask through my yoga leggings that are TOO GODDAMN SMALL, by the way. FUCK YOU, EMILY!
If I have to give every person I know some shit calendar for their Christmas (oh, I’m sorry, “holiday”) gift this year so that my daughter doesn’t get shamed out of an activity that, as far as I can tell, is just about eating Go-Gurt and having perfect French braids and some kind of special, personalized ribbons made by some cunt on Etsy, then so be it. I am not going to be making 20 different Twitter accounts to say ###GoSantaBarbThundrKatz### or whatever, because it is not my fault that I have better things to do, like squander my graduate education and throw up my secret Panda Express lunch in the cupholder of my Mercedes C-Class while I’m waiting for my kid to come out of a Build-A-Bear birthday party that cost more than my wedding.
It’s okay. I’m fine. I’ll get over it. And I think that right now I’m going to eat a bagel, too. Fuck this. I don’t need to learn how to use hashtags. You know why? Because F#ck#Off.
